


Mannimarco and the Old Ways

by ebsmith



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Aftermath, Childhood Trauma, Comfort Food, Dark Magic, Dead People, Death Rituals, Disasters, Elder Scrolls Lore, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Headcanon, Human Sacrifice, Magic, Mannimarco is really freaking old, Mannimarco practices what he preaches, Necromancy, Pre-Canon, Psijic Order, The Old Ways, The dead comfort the living, Vanus is cute and clueless, Wakes & Funerals, tiny mention of necrophilia, vague notions of how dragonbreaks work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebsmith/pseuds/ebsmith
Summary: Mannimarco was not the first Litch, the first Necromancer, or the first of anything really, yet he carries the biggest torch for the practice of Necromancy the world has ever seen. Here's as good a reason as any as to why.A fanciful take on how Manni becomes a necro, playing with the idea of how he is portrayed in Daggerfall, as well as in various writings from ESO and Oblivion.
Relationships: Vanus Galerion & Mannimarco
Kudos: 7





	Mannimarco and the Old Ways

Mannimarco remembers both the beginning and the end of the Dragon Break. It felt strange, even for him, to say he remembered the beginning, the end, and the beginning again of Time itself, but there it was.

He had been in the kitchen of his home. His father had just finished baking a rack of fruit pies and they were cooling on the counter. He was 8 1/2 years old at the time and was very intent on finding a way to nick one without either burning himself or getting a scolding from his father. His mother had just entered the hall and had seen him. She winks as she twitches her fingers and he grins back at her as one of the pies starts to rise into the air - and then he feels blood all down his front, streaming from his nose, eyes, and ears. He's standing in a ruin. He's a full-grown mer now, naked as the day he was born, and the skeletal remains of his parents lay collapsed beside him. '1008,' He Remembers, and screams until someone finally hears him.

  
His father's friends in the Order hear his cries and take him to their makeshift shelter. He hadn’t been Artaeum's only victim of the 1008 years, but he was by far the youngest. They wash and dress him and cut his hair to a reasonable length from the pile on the ground it had become and tell him what the Sages knew of the Dragon. "Akatosh... broke?" He responds in horror - and then he Remembers again. "Alinor" he whispers confused, and his father’s friends look at each other in a concern he does not yet understand.

  
'I'm handsome now,' he giggles to himself as he examines his new form in the small mirror. He now had his father's fine pale hair and his mother's firm jaw and intense amber eyes. He still had his great-grandfather's broad shoulders and thick bones. "That was good," his mother had said, no matter what some believed about mages needing to be thin and willowy. "You'll learn in time." And he believed her. He's thin as a rail now though, as skeletal as his dead parents were from 1008 years and 1 day. His feet ache to walk and his nerves burn for some reason. He places his hand to his chest, feeling his sluggish heartbeat.

One of his father’s friends walks in on him and he startles, embarrased, but the now much, much older man only smiles indulgently at him. Tavis, he was called. A Nede. "Would you like to see your parents?" He asks. 

"How?" 

"Get dressed and you’ll see." 

He blushes and reaches for the simple dark robe he had been wrapped in and follows the man out to the ruin of his old village.

  
The ruin was bathed in violet light, the glow from hundreds of black candles. The air was thick with the smell of ash and chalk from the immense and intricate ritual circle drawn onto the ground. He wasn’t the only one there. At least a hundred people had gathered, from both inside and outside the Order. He smells a very familiar smell then and grins: fruit pies! A table nearby is loaded down with food. He looks - down now hehe - at the matron keeping watch and she nods at him. He takes one and bites into it, moaning happily at the sweet berry filling and crisp shell. Not quite as good as his father's, but still very good.

"Come now. It begins," she says to him as she rises from her chair. Still with half a pie shoved in his mouth, he follows the matron over to where the others stand. A procession had begun. He watches as the dead are brought out, shrouded in red and gold, and lined up in rows within the ritual circle. 52 bodies in all, including his parents. 

"Where are the others?" He asks aloud. 

A stranger turns to him and answers bitterly, "these are the ones the Ritemaster would allow us.” 

"Why?"

"He claims the families did not consent. But I'm not so sure.” 

'Consent to what?' he wonders but does not ask. He would watch instead.

A tall woman in red and gold enters the circle amongst the bodies and intones: "Tonight, on this night, we are the guests of the dead. For those of you not familiar with this Rite, follow my lead.” 

The words of the chant are harsh and unfamiliar on his tongue, but he does his best and the roar of all present drowns out any mispronunciations of his own. His heart lurches in his chest and for a moment he sees a different violet light, falling from the heavens and-

He shivers, his eyes watering, but now everyone has thrown open their robes and are kneeling onto the grass and crawling towards the dead, so he follows, mindlessly. He reaches out when they reach out, to touch one of the now exposed corpses. 'Armielle,' he hears as a whisper in his mind. "Armielle" he cries aloud. The same happens all around him, the hundred others calling and crying out the names of the dead before them and he keeps calling, "Armielle! Armielle!" He hears a living scream then and startles afraid, but then the circle blooms with a red light, his heart lurches again, and he passes out.

  
When he comes to, the sight before him makes him gasp- with terror or amazement, he can’t decide. The dead walked! All of them! Most were skeletal but a few were whole flesh. The living now walked alongside them, and held them, and some even lay with them entwined on the grass just outside the circle. He shakes himself, looks for his parents, and nearly starts crying before Tavis calls out to him, "Over here Mannimarco!" 

He races over to where the man stood, still in the circle. His father and mother were nearly identical in appearance now, except for his father's long white hair. They had been rebuilt. He stares in fascination at the pins that held their bones and joints together, the stiff wrappings that served as a skin. Tavis touches his shoulder and he jumps.

"They cannot speak," he says. "But approach them. Touch them. They will know you as their own." He approaches and does as he is bid. They stand silent, more silent then they had ever been while alive, and he is afraid again. They smell of earth and leaf rot and sweet herbs and camphor. And fruit liquor. He smiles at that then, reaching out to his mother first, and gasps as he Feels her. He looks at Tavis. The man only grins back in encouragement. He turns back to his parents and touches his father too and oh, his father reaches for him and then his mother reaches for him and he takes their hands and stands with them, feeling their familiar Power.

  
"It's three hours till dawn," someone calls. Mannimarco has taken a seat on the grass and his parents had followed, and were idly touching his back, hair, and wrists. Tavis approaches him. 

"You will need to say goodbye soon, Mannimarco," he says. 

"Already?" He asks, his throat beginning to tighten. 

"Yes," he smiles kindly. "The ritual ends with the light, and they must return to the Dream to be born anew. That is The Way."

"Can... can I call them again?"

"Do you wish to learn how?"

"Yes!" He says empathically.

"Then I will show you," he says, and Mannimarco smiles, not sad any longer. 

  
Slowly the dead return to the circle and the living with them. "It is time," a man says now. Another Nede. He is nude but for a red and gold trimmed sash on his waist. "Please leave the circle," he commands. The still living retreat, some more reluctantly than others, and Mannimarco follows, after kissing his parent's hands and cheeks one last time. The man stands alone inside the circle and raises his arms. Four helpers then appear and cast a strange green light upon him. He casts a rune down on himself and the circle erupts in light enough to blind him for a moment. When the spots clear from his eyes, the man is being helped from the circle and the dead are collapsed on the ground, still once again. They stack the bodies neatly inside the remains of his village, in the largest home still standing. Not his own unfortunately, but he didn’t really mind. These were his father’s friends after all.

  
"Where is the woman in red?" he asks Tavis later, now back in the man's home. He has a whole tray full of fruit pies now, the matron had given him all that was left. 

"She joined the dead so they could join us for a time," he answers. 

"She joined... She’s dead?" Mannimarco asks, not quite knowing how to feel about that. 

Tavis looks at him strangely then. "She left of her own free will," he says.

Mannimarco swallows the bite of pastry in his mouth. "Can she come back too?" he asks. "Like the others?"

Tavis now smiles at him. "Yes my boy, she can."

  
\--900 or so years later--

  
"There you are!"

'Found me again,' Mannimarco thinks wryly to himself. Vanus now knew 18 out of 24 of his secret meditation spots. He's not sure whether he is more pleased at his young friend's resourcefulness, or annoyed by his own newfound lack of privacy. 

Vanus lifts his skirts from the ground, picking his way over the tumbledown boulders and dressed limestone of the ruin. "What is this place?" He asks.

"The place I grew up," Mannimarco answers honestly. 

"You were born on Artaeum?" Vanus is wide eyed at the thought. 

"Yes Vanus," he smiles back. Vanus stands near him now. Light gray dust coats his bare feet and the hems of his robes. Mannimarco’s smile widens.

"How... How long ago?"

Mannimarco ignores him for a moment to pick up a handful of that same dust from the ground where he sits. Vanus watches curiously as he holds it to his cheek. His grin shifts to a smirk. "How long do you think, Vanus?"

"Ah! I don’t... I mean-" 

Mannimarco relaxes against the wall behind him, enjoying the sight of his friend blushing his way to a guess. 

'Should I tell him the truth, Mother?' He asks in his mind, squeezing the dust in his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> So, the Psijics and Necromancy:
> 
> I'm thinking the Psijic Order is normally very don’t ask don’t tell about necromancy, as they seem to be with most things really. I mean, that vault is filled with undead (that keep respawning lol), yet you can come and go as you please? They can't care *that* much about what you'll find.  
> Also, the only in-game book I could find where it says that Psijics hate necromancy on principle is "The Black Arts on Trial", written by Hannibal Traven, the biggest anti-necro Archmage outside of Vanus Galerion himself. So unbiased source much?  
> Ergo, there's a small but thriving community of necros on the island, still practicing their interpretation of "The Old Ways", and Iachesis is mostly content to look the other way as long as its kept *very* discreet. But as we all know, both Mannimarco and Vanus are about as far from discreet as it's possible to get.


End file.
